Cooking from Scratch
How do you get people to stick around for a meeting? We find that simple bribery in the form of cookies is sufficient. But, one of the keys is that you need to keep changing the type of cookies, and they can’t be your standard chocolate chip or oatmeal cookies. Not that those are bad cookies; we’ll gladly eat either of those pretty much any day of the week. And therein lies the problem: they’re the ubiquitous cookies of the pastry world. Continue reading “Chocolate Sables”
As we head into fall, it’s never too early to start thinking about Christmas, specifically, what kind of treats to make for Christmas. Naturally, they should be easy to make, tasty, and they need to be sturdy enough to stand up to the rigors of being shipped. Not necessarily a small order, by any means. Fortunately for us, Shirley Fan has put together a whole bunch of recipes that will fit the bill in her book, The Flying Brownie: 100 Terrific Homemade Food Gifts for Friends and Loved Ones Far Away. When we saw it available at the library, we immediately placed a hold.
Continue reading “Pecan Sandy Bars”
We say “almost” in the title because we didn’t make the filling for these cookies, as we thought it might be just a bit too much. And, in some respects, we’re glad we didn’t. These are some rich chocolatey cookies. Very rich. Very chocolatey. Besides omitting the filling (you can find the full recipe with a simple search or even a click), we also made these cookies smaller than called for in the original recipe. Again, we’re glad we did. Did we mention very rich and very chocolatey?
Continue reading “Thomas Keller’s Oreos (Almost)”
Not biscuits like buttermilk biscuits, but biscuits that are more like cookies. The biscuits of Ireland and England and other areas of the world. Here in the U.S., we might refer to these as cookies, but that wouldn’t be quite the right term, because they aren’t really sweet like a cookie. Let’s just go with biscuit, and leave it at that.
Continue reading “Oat Digestive Biscuits”
Well, easy to remember the recipe anyway, as you’ll see below. But, making these isn’t that much harder, either. In fact, making the dough is super-simple; the only troublesome part is if you want your shortbread to turn out looking as if it could fit right in at the case at a Bouchon Bakery. I.e., the rolling, shaping, and cutting of the dough. But, even that’s not too difficult; it just requires a little bit of patience and careful work. Nothing that’s beyond us scratchers, right?
Continue reading “Bouchon Bakery Shortbread — Easy as 1-2-3”
Have you ever heard of benne seeds? It turns out that they’re sesame seeds, so this recipe could also be said to make Sesame Seed Wafers. Now what, exactly, are Sesame Seed Wafers, you ask? Right there, that tells us that you probably aren’t from South Carolina, where these little wafers are apparently quite popular. And with good reason, as you’ll see when you mix up a batch.
Continue reading “Benne Wafers”
Last week, we put together the Perfect Party Cake with Fluffy Butercream Frosting, and, if you did the same, or if you read carefully, you noticed that you now have eight egg yolks just sitting around waiting to be used. So, what to do with those egg yolks? We used a couple to make a batch of Pasta Dough (you can use whole eggs, or just yolks, or just whites — the pasta will still taste good). But, that leaves us with six yolks, and we’re still wondering what to do. Fortunately, we found a solution.
Continue reading “Egg Yolk Sugar Cookies”
